[Content edited to remove identifying info from supporting contributor.
sjh]
On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:58:04 -0400, [...] <clasione@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> Our company made a donation to the W3C in excess of $1,000.00 US on
> 2006-07-11 and as a thank you we were listed on this page:
> http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup
>
> I have now discovered that after many donations were received W3C has
> felt the need to add the
> "NOFOLLOW" tag to it's meta data causing a change to the effect that our
> link will have on your site.
> I know for a fact that this tag was not on the page before we donated as
> it actually was a deciding factor of making the contribution to begin
> with.
>
> I feel that this was a terrible decision to make, very misleading to the
> public, and extremely disrespectful to supporters
> of your cause. I am appalled that a company such as yours would pull
> such a tactic and respectfully request some type of remedy.
>
> Frankly, I am shocked....
Dear [...]
We have instituted the meta element because W3C's reputation was suffering
due to links to sites that sell page rank. We do not wish to be party to
that behavior and the nofollow approach ensures that we do not
inadvertently participate in that activity.
We have not yet found scalable ways to provide links from the Supporters
home page that are not subject to pagerank manipulations.
Best regards,
Coralie Mercier
--
Coralie Mercier Communications | Administration mailto:coralie@w3.org
World Wide Web Consortium - http://www.w3.org
MIT/CSAIL - 32 Vassar St. - Room 32-G528 - Cambridge, MA 02139 - USA
T:+33(0)872637890 F:+33(0)492387822 http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/